About the blog

You probably won’t see very many recipes posted on this blog, and that’s completely intentional. I don’t really cook with recipes. Sure, when I’m baking I’m pretty precise – but even then, I’ll modify recipes based on how things are behaving that day, or play with different proportions to see what happens. I realize that doesn’t make it any easier for you to make the delicious things that I’ll talk about, but that really isn’t the point. Cooking is about the experience: the smells, the tastes, the way that preparing and eating the food makes you feel. Hopefully you’ll join me on this culinary journey without asking about how we got there. After all, when you’re lying on a beach in the tropics with an umbrella drink in hand, you don’t insist on knowing the mechanics of the airplane that you flew on, do you?

About the name

The name of the blog is a triple play on words.

1. It’s a nod to my training as a classical pianist. Among other fantastic accomplishments, J.S. Bach combined technical prowess with artistic inspiration (there’s that science meets art thing again) and penned the 24 preludes & fugues that make up The Well-Tempered Clavier, Books I and II.

2. In order to behave properly, chocolate needs to be tempered. Chocolate can take on a number of crystalline forms, most of which aren’t stable. In a nutshell, tempering prompts the chocolate to assume its most stable crystalline form (beta prime, if you’re interested) so that it is shiny, snappy, and as stable as it can be.

3. Depending on my mood and how we meet, you might agree that I’m well-tempered. Or not.